Quick question as I don't have my cab with my right now - is there are way to light different LEDs based on whether the game is a 4-way/8-way/Analog/Diagonal?

And thanks for the update - its a great plugin.

As it stands all you could do is light a button based on the input codes for up/down/left/right or analog. There would be no way to distinguish between 4-way and 8-way, nor would there be any way to identify 2-way or 4-way diagonal. So basically the answer is no.

I've considered adding LEDs around my 49-way on my cp to indicate the current mode. So I may add this feature to LEDBlinky in a future release.

As it stands all you could do is light a button based on the input codes for up/down/left/right or analog. There would be no way to distinguish between 4-way and 8-way, nor would there be any way to identify 2-way or 4-way diagonal. So basically the answer is no.

Well, its a great plugin even without it. It would just be very useful to those of us who use a T-Stick Plus, so that you can change the action on the stick depending on the game.

Just finsihed setting up a Vista 64 bit machine with Mame 122, Mala and LED Blinky 3.5. Some weird stuff happens in the 64 bit world with Blinky 3.5:

1) Microsoft Sam has been replaced with Microsoft Anna in the 64 bit OS. Microsoft Mary and David install but when you try and select them in the Other Options menu of Blinky, there is an error.

2) Speech only enables AFTER pausing a game (where you have selected the Mame in game option to speak and flash controls when pausing or entering the admin menu). Once you do this, all speech options seem to work (except I can't confirm when Mala starts as you need to go ingame and pause first....).

Weird huh? Not sure if anyone has encountered the above or if Arzoo has any suggestions. I haven't noticed any other weird issues with Vista 64 but I'll post if I do.

Just finsihed setting up a Vista 64 bit machine with Mame 122, Mala and LED Blinky 3.5. Some weird stuff happens in the 64 bit world with Blinky 3.5:

1) Microsoft Sam has been replaced with Microsoft Anna in the 64 bit OS. Microsoft Mary and David install but when you try and select them in the Other Options menu of Blinky, there is an error.

2) Speech only enables AFTER pausing a game (where you have selected the Mame in game option to speak and flash controls when pausing or entering the admin menu). Once you do this, all speech options seem to work (except I can't confirm when Mala starts as you need to go ingame and pause first....).

Weird huh? Not sure if anyone has encountered the above or if Arzoo has any suggestions. I haven't noticed any other weird issues with Vista 64 but I'll post if I do.

rdenis,I've been working on a minor update to LEDBlinky which may solve the Vista issue. The current version of the LEDBlinky MaLa plugin works in a synchronous mode - MaLa waits for LEDBlinky to complete each event (FEStart, GameStart, ScreensaverStart, etc.). My updated version allows MaLa to run asynchronously - it's possible that this will solve the speech problem, but that's just a stab in the dark. I'll send you a pm with a link to the update.

To all LEDBlinky users,While I'm on the subject - here's some info on this latest update. A number of people have asked for the ability to light LEDs based on the joystick configuration (8-way, 4-way, diagonal, etc.). My cp has a 49-way wired to a GP-Wiz49 for digital restriction, so I too considered adding LED's around the joystick to indicate its current mode. Adding this feature was relatively simple. I also added a feature to speak the primary controls. For example, if you start Tron it will speak and blink the button functions and then speak "Primary Control 8-way Triggerstick and Spinner".

Then I got to thinking about my need to set the GP-Wiz49 mode when each game starts. I had planned on creating a new MaLa plugin for this. But it makes no sense for a second plugin to load all the controls.dat and mame.xml data into memory when LEDBlinky already has that data. So even thought it's out-of-scope for LEDBlinky to set the digital joystick mode, I'm going to add that feature - it's literally no more than 10 lines of code beyond what I'm already doing. If it's not too difficult, I'll also add support for the Ultimarc 360. For those (most) who don't need this, the feature will be disabled by default.

One other new feature - well it's not really new - I've fixed the "Abort Speech" option which turns out to be broken in v3.5. Prior to 3.5, LEDBlinky ran in the same thread as MaLa and hence it was able to detect FE key presses so that a user could abort the control speaking/blinking by pressing any button. But with v3.5, LEDBlinky runs in its own thread and requires a new method to detect key presses. The advantage to this new design it that LEDBlinky can now also detect a key press from mame, so you can abort the control speaking/blinking when mame is paused. But don't worry, I'm only checking the key messages for the brief period when LEDBlinky is speaking and blinking - otherwise the key hook is turned off.

Coding is 90% complete and the release should be ready in a few weeks.

Hey Arzoo this seems to be a great application. I just cant seem to get it to work in AtomicFE. I have followed all of the instructions in the document but I don't get anything at all. In all of the LED Blinkey apps it seems my LEDS function correctly. It seems that none of the information is getting over to Atomic FE. Can you help me at all with this?I have run the GenLEDBlinkyInputMap.exe and completed that. All my lights work correctly in there. Then I ran the LEDBlinkyConfig.exe. All of my animation tests work fine. I do get an error when I try to test any of the speaking options "SAPI Error Speaking: OLE error 8004503a" that's is a very cool feature but all i really want are for my LEDs to respond. I'm not too concerned about the voices. Like I say every hing seems fine until I run Atomic FE. Nothing happens....

Please Help I have been working on this for over 24 hours and cant sleep....

Hey Arzoo this seems to be a great application. I just cant seem to get it to work in AtomicFE. I have followed all of the instructions in the document but I don't get anything at all. In all of the LED Blinkey apps it seems my LEDS function correctly. It seems that none of the information is getting over to Atomic FE. Can you help me at all with this?I have run the GenLEDBlinkyInputMap.exe and completed that. All my lights work correctly in there. Then I ran the LEDBlinkyConfig.exe. All of my animation tests work fine. I do get an error when I try to test any of the speaking options "SAPI Error Speaking: OLE error 8004503a" that's is a very cool feature but all i really want are for my LEDs to respond. I'm not too concerned about the voices. Like I say every hing seems fine until I run Atomic FE. Nothing happens....

Please Help I have been working on this for over 24 hours and cant sleep....

CatttDaddy - go to sleep! Then, after you wake up, run the config app and turn on the debug log (Misc Options tab). Also check the Verbose option. Run Atomic and launch a game. Then check the LEDBlinky folder and post the debug.log file back here.

CatttDaddy,I just thought of something - did you activate the LEDBlinky plugin in the AtomicManager? On the General tab, check the Advanced Options box, then select the Advanced tab. Go to the Plugin's tab, and enable the LEDBlinky plugin. Hopefully this was your problem. If not, get me the debug log.

Ok after trying to get this debug file created I think I see part of the problem. I see that the LEDBlinky must be executed in order for the debug to be created. Well the LEDBlinky is not being executed.I have the 2 AtomicFE Files in the plugins folder LEDBlinky.atoplugLEDBlinky.plugcfg

I even putMala and GameEX in there just to see if it helps... it didn't. I checked the structure and everything seems ok...

I just totally reinstalled the plugin and get the same thing.

After looking into AtomicManager I see that the LEDBlinky plugin is over on the left side under available plugins. When I move it over to Enabled plugins and save, it will not save. If I reopen the cfg its not over there.also just a little more information I am using AtomicFE in "plugnplay" mode...Any further help would very much be appreciated... I would really love to get this to work....

Ok after trying to get this debug file created I think I see part of the problem. I see that the LEDBlinky must be executed in order for the debug to be created. Well the LEDBlinky is not being executed.I have the 2 AtomicFE Files in the plugins folder LEDBlinky.atoplugLEDBlinky.plugcfg

I even putMala and GameEX in there just to see if it helps... it didn't. I checked the structure and everything seems ok...

I just totally reinstalled the plugin and get the same thing.

After looking into AtomicManager I see that the LEDBlinky plugin is over on the left side under available plugins. When I move it over to Enabled plugins and save, it will not save. If I reopen the cfg its not over there.also just a little more information I am using AtomicFE in "plugnplay" mode...Any further help would very much be appreciated... I would really love to get this to work....

I do thank you for trying to help me

CatttDaddy,I've noticed that also - when you enable a plugin and then reload the config (AtomicManager), it does not show up in the enabled list - but it should still work. Look in your plugins folder for a file like this: atomic019.cfg.plugin.load. In that file you should see LEDBlinky. If not, then it's not enabled.

When you enabled the debug option, was the debug.log file generated? If it was, then the plugin is loading and the problem is not Atomic - I can't fix the problem without seeing that file. If there's no debug.log file, then the plugin is not loading.

CatttDaddy,Glad you got LEDBlinky blinking! In regards to the OLE error 8004503a error with the speech - I think you may need to install the Microsoft SAPI 5.1 software. Normally it comes with WinXP, but I don't know what version of Windows you're using. From Windows control panel, go to Speech and see if the Text To Speech feature is installed and working. If not, you can download from MS.

Hey my Internet was down yesterday. I hate say it but my LEDBlinkys blinked.... like once I got a few blinks in "one" of the sub menus in AtomicFE. they no longer blink at all what I did was to change all the paths to the AtomicFE/plugins/ folder and now none of them work at all...I tried putting it back the way it was but nothing.

Again I am getting the same thing as before.... None of the lights are coming on or opening the LEDBlinky.exe to even produce a Debug.log

This is F'ed up.First to even use LEDBlinky I updated my mame from 106 to this new mame123 and the sound on all my games is jacked up and runs slow. Now I cant even get the lights running on this stupid thing... I been up all night again trying to get this to work and now Im back to step one!I have a few questions.... Has anyone been able to get Atomic running with LEDBlinkey that are using PlugnPlay modules?I keep seeing Mala people that have this working fine Is Mala a better front end than AtomicFE over all? I tried Mala and didnt like the editor. I love AtomicFE for the ability to edit the layouts.

Im sorry, I am just tired and sick of this arcade machine. I want it working the way it was even if I have to say screw the LEDs.

Any other tips or tricks you can offer? Would my old Debug.log when it did blink a few times help?

I'm sure we can figure this out. But I'm still not sure if the problem is the Atomic configuration or the LEDBlinky configuration. Please post the debug.log file if you have one.

Try this, run Atomic and then Alt-Tab to some other open application so you can see your taskbar. Do you see the LEDBlinky icon in the system tray?

If not, then Atomic is not launching the plugin for some reason - you'll need to get help from the Atomic forum. If LEDBlinky is in the system tray, then please post the debug.log.

As for MaLa vs. Atomic - it's all personal preference. If you like Atomic then stick with it. I only recently modified LEDBlinky to work with Atomic - you may be the first to use it (beyond my testing). Anyway, don't give up on the LEDs!

CatttDaddy,I agree with Youki, you need to get the Atomic configuration working first. Looking over the LEDBlinky log, things don't look quite right but there are no errors - very strange. Did anything light up? I'll try your configuration on my test rig tonight and let you know what I find.

CatttDaddy,You may actually have Atomic configured correctly!!! After looking over you log - there's a couple of issues. First, from the LEDBlinky config app, on the Misc Options tab, you need to Uncheck all three Cabinet LED options. This feature is for a second set of LEDs for cabinet lighting - not the control panel LEDs. To be honest, this feature has caused more confusion than it's worth

The second problem has to do with the path to the plugins folder. If on the Atomic Manager the plugins path is relative (just plugins), then LEDBlinky should work - this is how I did all my testing. But as Youki has advised, to get the manager app to retain the enabled plugins, you need to specify a complete path to the plugins folder. Unfortunately this breaks LEDBlinky. Sooooo, I'll get a patch out within a day or so to fix LEDBlinky. In the mean time, you can try testing with the relative path, or just wait for my patch.

Hey I was just wondering. I see your stand alone mode can work with any FE. I was trying to make batch files to send the same codes to the ledblinky.exe

I was just wondering if there is a way to send a message for individual lights or an animation to light up through a batch file with LEDBlinky?

Thanks again with you r help earlier.

You can, but it wasn't really meant to work that way. What you can do is configure the "FE Active Animation" option and then start LEDBlinky with the FEStart command - LEDBlinky.exe 1. This will play the animation until you send the FEQuit command - LEDBlinky.exe 2. If you just want to light up some individual lights, then create a single frame animation - I know, it' a bit convoluted, but as I say, this is not how I intended LEDBlinky to be used. Maybe it warrants a future enhancement.

It would really be a great feature. I work with flash and think that that would be really good for anyone that wanted to jhave the lights work even without a FE with it. that was one of the reasons I really opted for this plugin I figured the commands had to be sent from the FE to the LEDs through some sort of exe that was called to send them.Using flash I can have it run custom bat files at various points in a movie this could be a simon says game or a screen saver with real time control over the leds. I hope you are able to add it.

Here's the updated AtomicFE plugin - this should resolve the problem when the plugins folder is defined as a full path in the Atomic Manager. It will also work with a relative path. Just overwrite the original file.

BTW Arzoo I sent Tom code to add support for native plugin dll's for GameEx. Not sure when he will get the time to implement it, but it's on the cards anyway. Shouldn't be too hard for you to port LEDBlinky to it

Dude!! You are the great one... Well one of them at least. It worked! I had given up and started using another FE but IMHO Atomic is my favorite and this just got me Running back!Thanks a ton! Now this is whats up! Blinky Blinkies! and with all sorts of colors! Jeez I been waiting a long time to take full advantage of these lights!

I just used your program to config my panel and its just awsome. Using LED-WIZ and single color buttons. Have a few questions.

I have it configured right now in MALA and when a game is launched to light up only the controls the game uses. However there are a few games I have remapped from mame defaults. Lednlinky seems to light up buttons based on default controls and not the custom ones for that game. Meaning its not reading a specific romname.cfg file in cfg folder in mame dir. Is it possible??

Randomly when jumping between emulators in MALA ill get an I/O error 6 from LEDBlinky and also sometimes access violation at addess 0047BD00 and read address 00000000 in xp and idea why? I attached my config and log files.

Lastly are there any plans to add functionality similar to Lumniaudio application that Randy wrote?

I just used your program to config my panel and its just awsome. Using LED-WIZ and single color buttons. Have a few questions.

I have it configured right now in MALA and when a game is launched to light up only the controls the game uses. However there are a few games I have remapped from mame defaults. Lednlinky seems to light up buttons based on default controls and not the custom ones for that game. Meaning its not reading a specific romname.cfg file in cfg folder in mame dir. Is it possible??

Yes - this is how LEDBlinky should work. You need to correctly specify the path to the mame\cfg folder. From the config app on the MAME tab, when selecting the MAME config folder make sure that the cfg folder is highlighted on the "Select Directory" dialog. This should solve the problem. In the settings.ini file you should see:[MAMEConfig]Mame_cfg_folder=C:\mame\cfg

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Randomly when jumping between emulators in MALA ill get an I/O error 6 from LEDBlinky and also sometimes access violation at addess 0047BD00 and read address 00000000 in xp and idea why? I attached my config and log files.

I see errors in your log when switching emulators. It seems like your Control-Color_emu.ini or Control-Color_mame.ini has an invalid value:Invalid Intensity Definition [49,0,0,0]. Missing [A] value.

The value should look like this: 49,0,0,0,0

Could you zip and post those two files?

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Lastly are there any plans to add functionality similar to Lumniaudio application that Randy wrote?

Here is the complete set of ini's. I didnt touch the color ones since I dont have any rgb lights.

One last thing I also noticed. On certain 2 player games button 5,6,7 on 2 player light up when they should not. Any 3 or 4 player game. Now I suspect what might be happing is this. Since my control panel has extra buttons that are mapped twice. For example I have 3 buttons wired to the same IPAC port. Now when I config my LEDWIZ button assignments in the LEDBLINKY INPUT MAP program I cant assign the same port label more then once. Since I have three player one buttons on my control panel I needed to use alternate port labels. Since these port labels are assigned specific keycodes and the keycodes can be use multiple times I would think that LEDblinky uses the keycodes to light up buttons and not the port label.

Here is the complete set of ini's. I didnt touch the color ones since I dont have any rgb lights.

I've identified a bug in the Profile Editor which only affected the Control-Color_emu.ini file (used for any emulator other than MAME). Even though you don't have any RGBs, LEDBlinky still uses this file to set the LED intensities. Try the file I've attached - it should resolve the errors when switching emulators. I'll also send you a pm later tonight with a link to a patched version of the editor.

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One last thing I also noticed. On certain 2 player games button 5,6,7 on 2 player light up when they should not. Any 3 or 4 player game. Now I suspect what might be happing is this. Since my control panel has extra buttons that are mapped twice. For example I have 3 buttons wired to the same IPAC port. Now when I config my LEDWIZ button assignments in the LEDBLINKY INPUT MAP program I cant assign the same port label more then once. Since I have three player one buttons on my control panel I needed to use alternate port labels. Since these port labels are assigned specific keycodes and the keycodes can be use multiple times I would think that LEDblinky uses the keycodes to light up buttons and not the port label.

Am I correct in assuming? If so why does button 5 6 7 light up?

Yes, LEDBlinky uses to keycodes to light up the buttons. You can assign the same keycode to more than one button - this will light them up together. The labels can be anything you want - so in your example, you could use P1B1a, P1B1b, and P1B1c as the labels for the player one buttons - and assign them all to KEYCODE_LCONTROL.

As for some games not lighting up the correct controls - let's get the other issues resolved first. You still need to set the correct path to the MAME cfg folder. Once that's good and you have all your labels correct and have the color profile fixed (file attached), then we can look at what's going on with specific games.

Ok I will test when I get home. I did already fix the problem with mame pointing to the proper directory (C:\mame\cfg) yesteraday and that solved mame specific game light mappings.

How do I label p1b1a, p1b1b. For what I remeber those portlabels are from a pull down menu. I dont see the option for subsets of ports. Again I can be wrong. If the port label has no effect on mame lighting up buttons then its no big deal. I have made a map on paper of my button layout, portname, and keycodes.

another thing Ive noticed is when I hit Pause button it used to play an animation, but now it doesnt. Not sure.

Ok I will test when I get home. I did already fix the problem with mame pointing to the proper directory (C:\mame\cfg) yesteraday and that solved mame specific game light mappings.

Sorry, your most recent zip file must still have the old settings.ini file. Glad that's one thing fixed!

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How do I label p1b1a, p1b1b. For what I remeber those portlabels are from a pull down menu. I dont see the option for subsets of ports. Again I can be wrong. If the port label has no effect on mame lighting up buttons then its no big deal. I have made a map on paper of my button layout, portname, and keycodes.

It is a drop-down menu, but you can still edit or add your own values - just type over the existing value. Others have been confused with this also. The list of values is just a default set of port labels.

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another thing Ive noticed is when I hit Pause button it used to play an animation, but now it doesnt. Not sure.

It should work unless you've disabled the feature. Could you turn on the debug log (config - Misc Options tab - Enable Debug Log) Also check the Verbose option. Then run MaLa, launch a game (one with the wrong buttons lighting) and try the pause feature. Afterwards, zip up debug.log and post it. Don't forget to disable the logging - it slows things down a bit.

I also went back to a stock controls_emi.ini same thing. when it chrashes i get tgat windows address error. ledblinky is still running on the taskbar and will continue to crash unitl you right click and exit out. The thing is it only does it with daphne and not any other emulators. Could it be that some roms have [] in their name? Could it be that I am using .bat files to lauch daphne in Mala?

I also went back to a stock controls_emi.ini same thing. when it chrashes i get tgat windows address error. ledblinky is still running on the taskbar and will continue to crash unitl you right click and exit out. The thing is it only does it with daphne and not any other emulators. Could it be that some roms have [] in their name? Could it be that I am using .bat files to lauch daphne in Mala?

Ok, there's nothing wrong with your default.cfg file. Here's why you're seeing additional buttons light up for some games (mostly 4-player); Some of the keycodes that MAME uses by default for players 3 and 4 are used on your cp for player 2 buttons. For example, MAME's default for P3_JOYSTICK_DOWN is KEYCODE_K - your cp has KEYCODE_K assigned to player 2 button 6. So when you launch NBAJAM, even though your cp doesn't support players 3 and 4, LEDBlinky gets the controls for players 3 and 4 and lights up any LEDs assigned to the keycodes. To be honest, I'm not sure why other LEDBlinky users haven't had this same problem. Anyway, there are a number ways to fix this - you could edit the Control-Input_mame.ini file and remove all entries for players other than 1 and 2. But I decided to add a config option that will let you set the number of players on your control panel (1-4). This way, LEDBlinky won't waste time processing player controls that are not supported by your cp.

On to the next issue - LEDBLinky errors when switching emulators. This one could be tricky (memory is getting stepped on), but I think I have a fix. I'll pm you with the patch later today.

The last issue - no animation when pausing a game. This is definitely a logic bug in the code and it should be easy to fix. I'll look into it tonight.